Branches

We use the following branches for Erlang/OTP.

master

The master branch is used for the upcoming major OTP-XX.0 releases. It will contain major changes and new features from the OTP-team and the open-source community.
We only merge tested changes to the master branch. You can safely base branches on the master branch. It will not be rewound.
Typically, everything in the master branch will be included in the next major release.
The master branch should include all new features or major changes to Erlang/OTP.
The master branch will also include everything that is currently in the maint branch.

maint

maint is a maintenance branch used for the upcoming minor OTP-XX.Y releases. We only merge tested changes to the maint branch (and simple changes that are obviously correct). You can safely base branches on the maint branch. It will not be rewound. Typically, everything in the maintenance branch will be included in the next release.
The maintenance branch should not include any new features, the focus of this branch is bug fixes and improvements.

maint-X

The maint-X branches are used to track released patch OTP-XX.Y.Z releases. Only patches that are determined to fix important broken behaviour become part of these branches. You should never base any contributions on these branches.

git remote add upstream git://github.com/erlang/otp.git

For background on this command, see Forking a project.